Je ne savais pas que je portais une bombe à retardement dans la poche de mon pantalon. Il s’agit d’un Huawei P9, un petit téléphone intelligent dont les fabricants ont le potentiel de causer beaucoup de problèmes pour beaucoup d’entre nous. Révolu, le temps où nous devions téléphoner à Nice au boucher du coin […]
Science
Make Someone Happy – Take Buzby Huawei!
Little did I know that I was carrying a time bomb in my back pocket. It’s a Huawei P9, a smart little phone (forgive the pun!) whose makers have the potential to cause a lot of us a lot of trouble. Gone are the days when we had to phone the local butcher to make […]
A Pi In The Sky – 3.14 And A Few More Decimals
I was never much good at maths. In fact, to this day, I will never come to terms with 10 minutes of nightmare that I went through during a maths test. I was about 10 at the time, but I remember every single moment of having to admit to the whole class that I was […]
- Biology
- ...
How To Destroy A Human Brain
It’s a story I missed, but having now seen it, I cannot leave it untouched. It represents, on its own, all that is magnificent and evil about human existence – the magnificence of giving life to another, and the evil of taking part of that same life away. In November last year, a French court […]
Communicating Beyond Beauty (1) – The Whale Song
What if you could write a love song for a whale, and an orchestra went out into the ocean to play it? As you listen, you can see the spectrogram of a beautiful humpback whale song from deep in the Monterey Bay. These […]
- Brexit
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“Foreigners Go” – The Settled Status App For EU Citizens
If ever you have wanted to play an online game that put your whole future at risk, now’s your chance. If you are an EU citizen living in the UK, just download the government’s “settled status” app, as soon as it becomes available, and start playing. The fact that the government insists that the application […]
- Satire
- ...
If There’s Life Without Facebook, Send Me The Link!
It’s one minute to midnight and we are entering the last day of the year. Forget about Brexit, Trump, and violent men with yellow vests. Forget about the fact that we haven’t had a white Christmas for ages, and that the Japanese are hell-bent in chasing sharks. This time of year […]
- Psychology
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The Case Against Evolutionary Psychology – When Science Forgets Morality
I’ve had a brief encounter with the world of evolutionary psychology, by posting my last piece in a Facebook group baring the same name. It was accepted by a moderator but not, it seems, by the group’s members. Maybe they didn’t like the way I criticized psychologists. I was accused of submitting a blog post […]
- Culture
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One “D” Or Two? – Bilingualism And “Le Brain”
Bilingualism isn’t all fun, I’m afraid. There are certain words in English that I loathe, and there are certain words in French that I hate, when I’m forced to spell them. I still haven’t found a way of remembering that the French word “adresse” and English word “address” are spelt differently whilst, apparently, meaning the same thing. […]
Climate Change: Run Rabbit, Run – Run From The Sun
Yes, I know. Before you start accusing me of going all “ecological”, I am aware that the last “dreadful” summer we had, was back in 1976. Since those golden days, we have had widespread floods in Europe, a tornado in London’s Kensal Green, an erupting volcano in Iceland, earthquakes in Italy, no white Christmas for […]